Lord of Shadows The Dark Artifices 2

Delan blanched. “His what?” The true name of a faerie gave anyone who knew it power over them. Emma couldn’t imagine what it would mean for the King to have his name revealed.

“His name,” Annabel said. “Malcolm was very close to him for many years. He learned your monarch’s name. I know it too. If you do not clear off now, and return to the King with my message, I will tell it to everyone on the Council. I will tell every Downworlder. The King is not loved. He will find the results most unpleasant.”

“She lies,” said Airmed, his hawk’s eyes slitted.

“Risk it with your King, then,” she said. “Let him find out you are the ones responsible for the revelation of his name.”

“It would be easy enough to silence you,” said Etarlam.

Annabel did not move as he strode toward her, raising his free hand as if he meant to strike her across the face. He swung, and she caught his wrist, as lightly as a debutante taking her waltz partner’s arm during a dance.

And she flung him. He sailed across the courtyard and slammed into a wall with the clang of armor. Emma gasped.

“Etar!” Ethna cried. She started toward her brother, abandoning Jules—and froze. Her curved sword was rising out of her hand. She reached for it, but it was floating above her head. More cries came from the other Riders—their swords were being jerked out of their grasps, gliding into the air above their heads. Ethna glared at Annabel. “You fool!”

“That wasn’t her,” came a drawling voice from the doorway. It was Magnus, leaning heavily on Dru’s shoulder. She seemed to be half-supporting him. Blue fire sparked from the fingers of his free hand. “Magnus Bane, High Warlock of Brooklyn, at your service.”

The Riders exchanged glances. Emma knew they could make new weapons easily, but what good would it do them if Magnus just snatched them out of their hands? Their eyes narrowed; their lips curled.

“This is not finished,” said Karn, and he looked across the courtyard directly at Emma as he said it. This is not finished between us.

Then he vanished, and the remaining Riders followed. One moment they were there, the next gone, winking out of existence like vanishing stars. Their swords crashed to the ground with the loud clang of metal against stone.

“Hey,” muttered Kit. “Free swords.”

Magnus gave a low grunt and sagged backward; Dru caught at him, worry in her wide eyes. “Get inside, now. All of you.”

They scrambled to obey, the intact pausing to help those who had been injured, though none of the injuries were serious. Emma found Julian without even needing to look for him—her parabatai senses were still humming, her body’s interior knowledge that he had been cut, would need healing. She slid her arm around him as gently as she could, and he winced. His eyes met hers, and she knew he was feeling her own wound, the cut at the top of her shoulder.

She wanted to throw her arms around him, wanted to wipe the blood from his face, kiss his closed eyes. But she knew how that would look. She held herself back with a control that hurt more than her injury did.

Julian squeezed her hands and drew away reluctantly. “I have to go to Annabel,” he said in a low voice.

Emma started. She’d nearly forgotten Annabel, but she was still there, in the center of the courtyard, the Black Volume hugged to her chest. The others stood around her uncertainly—after all the time spent looking for Annabel, it was clear no one had ever imagined she’d come to them.

Even Julian paused before he reached her, hesitating as if deciding how to break the silence. Near him, Ty stood between Livvy and Kit, all of them staring at Annabel as if she were an apparition and not really there at all.

“Annabel.” It was Magnus. He had limped down the steps to the bottom; he had only a light hand on Dru’s shoulder now, though there were dark crescents of exhaustion below his eyes. He sounded sad, that depthless sort of sadness that came out of a time, a life, that Emma could not even imagine. “Oh, Annabel. Why did you come here?”

Annabel drew the folded piece of paper from the Black Volume. “I received a letter,” she said, in a voice so soft it was barely audible. “From Tiberius Blackthorn.”

Only Kit didn’t look surprised. He put his hand on Ty’s arm as Tiberius scanned the ground furiously.

“There was something in it,” she said. “I had thought the world’s hand turned against me, but as I read the letter, I imagined there was a chance it was not so.” She raised her chin, that characteristic, defiant Blackthorn gesture that broke Emma’s heart every time. “I have come to speak with Julian Blackthorn about the Black Volume of the Dead.”

*   *   *

“There is an undead person in our library,” said Livvy. She was sitting on one of the long beds in the infirmary. They’d all gathered there—all but Magnus, who had closed himself into the library with Annabel. They were in various stages of being runed and patched up and cleaned. There was a small pile of bloody cloths growing on the counter.